51
(Jon Bellion- Stupid Deep)
Tells
Two guards were seated on the floor next to Simira’s open door in drunken daze, checked out of reality. I stood there idly trying to figure out some action to take, still foggy from sleep. My eyes glanced rapidly over everything, unable to strongly take anything in. The door was shut, and I wasn’t supposed to go in. I couldn’t go in. I wanted to knock, but nobody was allowed in. I grabbed at the hems of my nightgown, not even having realized I walked out in it. I was unarmed and barefoot, completely useless to keep anyone out.
Is Simira okay? The guards out front, Zev rushing around, and the order to keep everyone out. What’s going on? Is Simira dead?
I halted in front of the door, hand hovering over the handle.
What if it isn’t that? What if she’s okay and there’s just some minor emergency? I can go in, right? She’ll forgive me if I peek in on something I wasn’t supposed to, right? Or would she?
I couldn’t stop myself from caring, or maybe I just didn’t care what would happen. Maybe both.
I anxiously knocked at her door, a swelling fear in my heart as there was no answer. My hands shook uncontrollably and I clutched the handle of the door, the cold metal freezing me in place, completely unlocked. I glanced down at the two unconscious guards and threw the door open. My heart was pounding in my ears as my eyes searched the dark study for any signs of her. Everything was normal as ever, except for her bedroom door, which was wide open, and the freezing wind pouring through from outside that slammed the door behind me.
I knew what was coming, and yet I was praying for anything else to be the case. I would have preferred to walk in on her and have her scream and hit me over the stillness I encountered. And that’s what it was. Stillness. In the silent darkness, Simira’s body lay still behind the translucent bed curtains. I crept toward her bed and pulled the curtains apart.
From her shoulders down were still covered in blankets, but her lifeless sunken eyes, staring upward emptily were all I needed to see. My heart fell into my stomach and I sank to my knees in front of her bed. I didn’t know how long I sat like that, but there was nothing else I could think to do. The feeling was back, the feeling I had been forcing back since Vetia died… masking my grief with the naive assumption that I could make something good out of it all… make it right. I rested my hand on her cool head and wept over her bed.
Why didn’t I do more? Why didn’t I push harder, so that maybe I could have been here with her? If I’d been here, would she still be alive, or would we both be dead? Why didn’t I do more to protect her when she was still around? I don’t even know who I’m crying for anymore. The heart, the blood in the courtroom and my inability to act. Her cold, dead face in bed and my fear of pressing her to not be alone. All of the hardship, all of the agony, all of the death, was it all because I didn’t do anything? Because I didn’t care enough? Why did it feel so hard to keep everyone alive? Why did I leave Simira and Vetia to be alone? If I had been a better friend, maybe none of this would have happened.
I couldn’t stifle what few cries escaped my lips. I punched and pounded at my thighs.
I could have done better! I could have been better! I could have saved them but I didn’t! I could have prevented all of this from happening if I wasn’t so fucking worthless!
Both of my fists were slamming into my legs until I had no strength left and cried into the sheets before me.
“I’m sorry I- I- I didn’t care enough! I don’t know how to be close!”
Her face was so still, and perhaps the most peaceful I had ever seen her. Even for the dark bruises stretching around her neck and the dried streaks of tears down her temples, she was so strangely calm.
“Blood!”
My head twisted around as Eulin’s voice erupted behind me. He trotted over to the bed and pointed at her with a key in his hand. “Blood! Blood! Blood! Blood!”
It repeated over and over, that fucking word.
“Tells! Where are-” Captain Zev’s voice burst into the room, halting as he saw Eulin standing there, pointing to Simira with the key to her room, and shouting “Blood” as a slow stream dripped from his hands down the end of the key. I looked to Captain Zev, and the nyadin woman I delivered the purse to. All of us knew exactly what everyone was thinking, as the murderer showed off his work to the people who were closest to Simira.
My face twisted with horrible rage and there were no words from my mouth. Rational thought left me and my arms started swinging and grabbing at the murderer in front of me. All I wanted was to bash his head into the floor until it was nothing. Wring his neck until he knew exactly how awful it felt to die, and then let off and do it all again from the start. The most hideous visions of every way I wanted to kill and brutalize this stupid fuck flashed through my mind until it was all I could see. He flailed his arms out in front of him and screamed, collapsing into a fetal position on the floor.
Captain Zev yelled something. I wasn’t listening. He grabbed at me, yanking me up into the air and off of Eulin. He grunted and threw me backward. I skidded across a dresser, sending planks, makeup, and other things flying onto the floor, crashing and shattering.
“Tells! Get ahold of yourself!”
I couldn’t control the sharp, icy breaths I took, glaring at Zev, teeth chattering in a fury I’d never felt before. He was the same way, but so much more composed.
“I’LL FUCKING KILL HIM!”
“Not now! There will be a time! He will face justice!”
“What justice?! He did it! He’s right here!”
I pushed against Zev until he put his arm against my chest and barreled me into the wall. All the air left my body on impact, and I reeled on the ground, catching my breath. All the while, Eulin screamed and cried from his fetal position on the floor.
“I said nobody in and nobody out, and you enter! This is why I demanded such a thing! That we may rationally resolve this!” He put his foot against my chest and turned to the other woman. “Miriel! Get to her!”
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
Miriel hurried to Simira’s bedside and hunched over her as light green energy formed in front of her face.
“Captain,” she said.
Zev finally turned to her.
“The Lady is dead. There is nothing I can do for her.”
Zev’s shoulders went slack and his face turned blank. “She’s only been choked, right?! There’s no blood! Can’t she still be saved?!”
She remorsefully pointed to the bloodstains on the back of the pillow, dripping from the sides of her neck when Eulin gripped so hard that he pierced her skin. “Captain, her brain is dead, she has no more connection to jzanmah. I cannot save-”
“Is her heart unable to be started?! Was her head lopped from her body?! There must be a way! Miriel, can you do nothing?!” Zev stomped over to her, looming over her small frame and yelling at her in desperation.
Miriel recoiled back as she tried yelling over him. “Captain! She is dead. I can make her blood pump, I can make air enter her lungs, I can keep her body suspended and functioning indefinitely, but she will never live again! There is simply no way to return life to the dead!”
Captain Zev lost his strength and fell into a seated position on the bed, quiet, mournful. “ZUHTAAAAAK!” He screamed out a raging, pained roar like I’d never heard before. The whole manor must have heard his cry, because everything fell silent.
Miriel remained collected, but was clearly struck by some sense of worry or fear. “I need this room clear, Captain, so that I may conduct an autopsy and find her cause of death. Please, hold Eulin until we can be sure it was him.”
He looked around the room emptily, and then finally down at the corpse of his former Lady. “He stole the master key! He has blood on his hands and he is strong enough that even I struggle to wrestle him! Tells, stand. We do not need the autopsy to know what transpired in this room tonight.”
Zev shot up and reached a hand down to me and yanked me to my feet. “Eulin is re-” his eyes turned feral, darting around. Eulin wasn’t there. We exchanged a fiery glance and took off in a dead sprint for the hallway.
We raced out the doors, stopping to listen. Thumping. Like arhythmic running toward the west wing. Zev heard it first and took off. My heart was beating out of my chest and all of my senses were more honed than they’d ever been. We got to the main foyer, listening. Running further into the west wing.
Zev yelled back “He’s running to his room!”
He was much faster than me, springing off of his double-jointed legs at incredible speeds, crashing into the walls at every hard turn. He jumped all the way down the stairs, which I reached the top of as he was already all the way down the hallway by the dungeon door. He pounded on the sturdy reinforced door to Eulin’s cell. He threw himself against it, trying to break it open, but the door was locked.
“Damn door!” He slammed his shoulder into it one more time.
“Get the fuck outta the way!” I reared back and trusted both of my fists to do their yeffen fist thing. My arms rammed the lock, fire surging in my growing muscles.
The lock?
The lock on our side of the door, which automatically fell into place when the door closed, fell off and the door slowly crept open.
Captain Zev and I exchanged a silent, knowing glance and he drew his dagger, pushing the door the rest of the way. The dark room was only illuminated by the hallway light. Captain Zev coughed as we were blasted by a wall of body odor and rot. We both crept forward, clearing the mess of a room with our eyes. The cot on the floor was empty and windows unbroken. The only place left was the mound of filthy pillows and blankets, which shifted ever so slightly.
Is he gonna jump out? Or Is he just hiding?
Zev pointed to the mound and motioned for me to pull away the blanket. He held his dagger and readied himself in a fighting stance.
I tiptoed to the mound and set my hand on the largest pillow, then held up three fingers.
Three.
Two.
One.
I yanked the pillow free and nothing happened. Zev stood there, planted, aghast at what I revealed. I tossed the pillow aside and carefully gazed into the darkness. A horrid, rotting fume assaulted my nose. There, beneath the pillow, a pile of bones and carcasses of birds and rodents. Bitemarks riddled the torn flesh. On the other side of that, a hole in the stone wall to the outside, where Eulin’s haunted stare locked on us.
Captain Zev darted around out the door and Eulin took off.
No, Eulin might be gone by the time Zev gets outside. Fuck it.
I dove into the putrid pile, crawled through the decaying flesh and blood, out the hole in the side of the manor. I fought through shrubs, branches, and more bones littering the ground. The rest of the little-used alley between the training grounds and the southwestern corner was completely unassuming. The shrubs along the side of the manor concealed everything except for the grates to the dungeon cells.
Eulin ran heavily, clumsily toward the west gate, moaning and wailing the whole way. Without another thought, I dashed forward, closing the distance in barely ten seconds, tackling him to the ground and wrestling him into an arm bar. He scratched at me with mangled, unruly fingernails and bit at my leg until I kicked his jaw. Captain Zev tumbled to a stop next to me and recoiled for a moment at the bones and rotten carcasses tangled in my hair.
Ashen snow was falling from the sky, drifting gently over us on this somber night. This night, Eulin Amien murdered his sister. And he would be executed for it come morning. All the proof was the key and his bloodstained hands. An unfortunate victim to circumstances of his birth, but judging by the creatures he’d been killing, there wasn’t any saving him.
Captain Zev and I hauled him to the dungeon and threw him in. Miriel hadn’t finished her autopsy when we returned to Simira’s room.
“Miriel,” Zev declared, “your services are greatly appreciated, but there is no more need for them.”
Miriel looked at him like a deer in headlights. “Captain, but-”
He raised his hand to silence her, shaking his head remorsefully. “We have the criminal. He is locked in the dungeon for execution tomorrow. You are relieved.”
“No, Captain Zev, I have reason to believe it was not him.” She dodged her eyes around the room. “I haven’t finished, but I don’t understand how jorlad hands could penetrate the neck as such.”
I showed my arm to Miriel. “His fingernails clawed the shit out of my arms.”
Zev nodded. “He is a cur. His strength is uncontrolled. He was likely in a fit of rage. We found bones and dead rodents in his room, buried beneath a mound of pillows. They had been torn apart by teeth and hands. There is no doubt that he is the perpetrator.”
She sighed, not yet on board. “I understand, Captain, but I must still finish the autopsy, just to be completely sure.”
He shook his head and shrugged. “I will-” he glanced at Lady Simira’s waxy face and his whole demeanor shrunk like he’d lost his entire reason to live. “I will be in the study if you require assistance.” He exited and I followed. He sank in the chair across from hers, head in his hands, peering up at it every now and then like he would see her there. I sat against the wall by her door, unsure of what to do, in complete silence.
Nearly an hour later, Miriel passed into the room and eyed us both, unsure of who to speak to. Zev had his head in his hands, tapping his foot on the floor, and I was just there, emptily gazing at the most recent painting of her.
Miriel addressed us both. “I’ve finished the autopsy. Shall I-”
Zev cut her off weakly. “Burn a report. I’ll receive it in the morning.”
She didn’t press further, just looked like there was more she wanted to say.
“I’ve taken blood samples that I must test. The equipment is at Hallax Hall, but based on the sigil, there’s a foreign substance in her system, potentially a toxin. I’ll return with the report in the morning, but I implore you, hold the execution until we are sure of the murderer.”
He waved her away. She quietly disappeared out the door without another word.
“Tells, I must inform Tarynn of his sister’s death. But he has locked himself in his room, so please, stand guard over L-” he choked on his words. “Please… stand guard over…” he was about to break, but he held strong. “…Lady Simira’s corpse. I- I will return shortly.”
Then I was left in silence, idly staring across her study at the joyful, early family portrait of the late Viscountess Simira Amien.